Geography

Description

RAYKO PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION
Describes a different sense of place

Geography
Photographs by Stella Kalaw, John Mann, and Anthony Marchetti

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 17, 2009
Exhibition dates: December 17 - January 18, 2010

RayKo is proud to present a show that features the work of three artists who have been exploring the idea of geography and place. Local artist Stella Kalaw’s photographs speak about the absence of family. Her roots are in Manila where she lived in one home with her parents and siblings. Her tight-knit family celebrated traditions together with aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins for several years. When Kalaw’s family migrated to America over a decade ago, the meaning of home and family unknowingly began to alter, assimilation to the American life took priority. The "Family Spaces" project was born out of a longing to be close to her family. The work, large color diptychs, is a visual representation of interconnected lives experienced in different regions of the world. Viewing one personal space next to the other creates the illusion that they are part of one home, although they are of lives lived in four different time zones. Kalaw’s spaces have a sense of longing and solitude while being lived in.
The next artist’s spaces also have a sense of longing, but for the deserted space to be inhabited. Working as a “turn” painter, painting apartments after previous renters leave and before new tenants arrive, Anthony Marchetti uses an 8x10 view camera to photograph detritus left behind by former tenants. In his project, "Room for Rent", rooms become containers for evidence: each mark on the wall, carpet imprint, and abandoned object offer a glimpse into private lives of previous residents. The images insinuate a past never made explicit while revealing human attempts to claim individuality within architectural conformity and banality.
And lastly, the photographs in John Mann’s series are real places, re-invented. Describing the landscape and geography in a new way. "Folded in Place" creates a tangible photographic “place” in each image that is occupied by a mapped construction. The images therefore provide precise photographic and mapped information while at the same time offering an abstraction of the landscape itself. The viewer is shown a place that is simultaneously understood and unknown, a landscape in which the map obtains a new geography of its own. A place where you long to go, but the map has been detached from the route to get there, so it is unattainable, like a dream…

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